India braces for new violence

MUMBAI - India has stepped up security at religious sites after car bombs killed at least 48 people in its financial capital in an attack police suspect was the work of Muslim groups.

Extra police with semi-automatic weapons patrolled temples, mosques and public places nationwide.

In Mumbai, police raided slums and picked up people for questioning.

Police also increased spot identity checks after Monday night's bombs, which were planted in two taxis.

"We have increased the number of pickets around religious places," said New Delhi police spokesman Ravi Pawar.

"Patrolling in markets and crowded areas has been intensified, and posters and leaflets are being put up educating the public to be careful about suspicious packages."

Bloodstained footpaths, broken glass and debris yesterday marked the blast sites, one at a crowded gold and jewellery market, the other near the Gateway of India, a huge waterfront arch built by India's former British rulers.

Completed 80 years ago by the British rulers after a visit by King George V, the Gateway of India is to Mumbai what Trafalgar Square is to London.

The giant basalt triumphal arch was once an assertion of colonial supremacy, but has become the emblem of the nation's trendiest, most confident and most populous metropolis.

The area has always been a crowd-puller.

Nearby is the Taj Mahal hotel - a five-star establishment with an international reputation.

Beyond stretch glorious views of Mumbai harbour. Tourists gather in large numbers

Millions of Hindus are also travelling across the country on a major pilgrimage to a river near Mumbai.

Authorities yesterday found nine detonators on a rail track near Mumbai hours after the two bombs exploded.

And railway police said several sleepers had been removed and used to block the tracks on a line being used by millions of pilgrims headed to a Hindu festival.

A trainload of pilgrims was halted after the detonators were found.

Pakistan, accused by India of harbouring Muslim radicals who attack its territory, condemned the blasts as "acts of terrorism".

They coincided with a thaw in relations between the nuclear-armed rivals.

"I don't see Monday's events affecting the dialogue process, unless irrefutable evidence is found" that Pakistan was involved, said C. Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, a New Delhi think tank.

The two nations had "acquired a degree of resilience to deal with the escalation of violence that accompanies talk of resuming a dialogue".

Bhaskar said peace overtures frequently sparked violence as those with vested interests in bad relations - extremists on both sides - tried to stop ties growing closer.

Mumbai opened for a normal working day yesterday with its usual heavy traffic and packed trains.

"Every moment, I feel there is danger," said Sheikh Abdul Sheikh, a 32-year-old tailor waiting at a bus stop. "But still, I have to put my life on the line and go out to work today,"

Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani was to fly to Mumbai to visit some of the 150 people injured in the blasts.

Police said they suspected an outlawed Muslim student group working with the Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba of planting the bombs.

No one has claimed responsibility. Police are questioning the owner of one of the taxis used in the blasts about a couple who hired him on Sunday for a tour.

The explosions were the worst in Mumbai since 1993, when a series of bombs killed at least 260 in what was seen as retaliation for the deaths of minority Muslims after Hindu-Muslim riots.

The attacks came at a sensitive time for India.

Its most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, is in political crisis after its ruling coalition collapsed, and polls are due soon in five other states.

Another source of tension is a report suggesting a Hindu temple predated an ancient mosque in the town of Ayodhya, at the heart of Hindu-Muslim riots in the early 1990s.

A thaw in relations with Pakistan is also at a delicate stage after the two nations came close to war last year.

But although previous attacks have heralded a deterioration in relations with Pakistan, New Delhi held back from criticising its neighbour this time and Islamabad condemned the bombings.

The attack was the latest in a series to hit the city of almost 16 million.

A bomb on a bus killed three people in December, 12 were killed in March by a bomb on a rush-hour train and two died in another bus bomb in July.

Police have long feared a major attack or clashes in Mumbai after riots in the nearby western state of Gujarat in 2002 that killed at least 1000 people, mostly Muslims.

Those riots came after a suspected Muslim mob torched a trainload of Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya, killing 59.

Ayodhya has been a lightning rod for Hindu-Muslim tension since late 1992 when Hindu hardliners tore down a mosque they said had been built on the birthplace of the Hindu god-king Ram, triggering riots and the 1993 Bombay bombings.

On Monday, a court-ordered report from a team of archaeologists was released.

It said evidence of a Hindu temple was found under the ruins of the mosque, raising fresh fears of strains.

- REUTERS